Stop Press – TV Contract!

I am signing up with a TV production company who want to make a major TV series of The Chronicles of Christoval Alvarez. They envisage “the show will have high production values and will be classy and entertaining” and they want “to develop the idea faithfully to create a big and recognisable brand for television across the world.”

During the last few months I have been approached by four different production companies wanting to make the series, but fortunately I have been able to leave the negotiations in the hands of my specialist film and TV agent. We’ve gone for the one I most like the sound of. Needless to say, I’m feeling a little punch-drunk (or cup-shotten, as Kit Alvarez would say). The production company has to sell the idea to a TV broadcaster, of course, so there’s a long way to go yet. I’ll keep you posted.

By the way, you’ll notice that The Lopez Affair is on the point of being published.

Now to something a little calmer.

A writer friend of mine, Prue Batten, asked me earlier this year to contribute to a feature she has been running on her blog, called ‘Desert Island Books’, in which she asks fellow writers to name the ten books they would want to have with them if marooned on a desert island, and to explain why. She recently posted my list on her blog. I had given a lot of thought to my ten books (too few!) and to my reasons for choosing them. Since I don’t suppose there is a huge overlap between the followers of our two blogs, I thought I would include my ten books here, as I think you might find it interesting. I would really like to know how you would go about choosing your ten books. Would you use the same criteria as I did? Or something quite different?

Desert Island Books

First Thoughts

I’ve used two criteria in choosing my ten books: substance and influence. If one were to be restricted to so few books, some of them would need to be substantial. And if the selection is to be meaningful, some would need to be books which have influenced my life. I am assuming that, as in Desert Island Discs, the castaway will be provided, automatically, with the Bible and The Complete Works of Shakespeare.

The Woods of Windri

I’ll start with my childhood. I had a rather odd, piecemeal education, and when I was nine I spent one term at a PNEU school (Parents’ National Education Union). The curriculum was unusual and enlightened. Every term the class studied one Shakespeare play and performed a shortened version of it. We did Julius Caesar. This introduced me to Shakespeare, to the theatre, to acting (I played Caesar), and to the Romans. I can trace the origin of my love of literature, of history, and of languages to this point. Shortly afterwards, for my tenth birthday, my aunt and uncle gave me Violet Needham’s The Woods of Windri, which sowed the seed of a lifetime’s love of the medieval era. To this day I can read it with that shiver of remembered delight, for it brings to life a vivid sense of the times, with no modern condescension and no ‘gadzookery’. Odd, when I look back, to realise that so much of what I was to become was shaped during less than twelve months.

The Complete Works of Chaucer

When I was twelve, I had a wonderful form master, Charlie Danner. He must have seen something in me worth nourishing, for he used to spend the school lunch hours reading The Canterbury Tales with me. How many teachers would do that? I was entranced, both by the language, and by the realisation that although these stories had been written by someone in the fourteenth century, I could actually read them myself. (Later, when I was working for my A Level English, the teacher insisted that we ‘translate’ Chaucer. I was outraged.) There is something for everyone in The Canterbury Tales – tragedy, comedy, lofty emotion and low farce. It was Charlie Danner who first urged me to go to Oxford, and instilled that dream in me. He left teaching at the end of that year, to train as an Anglican vicar. As a parting gift, he gave me a copy of Goodbye, Mr Chips, inscribed ‘For Ann, who was not a dull oaf’.

I Capture the Castle

In my early teens, I read Dodie Smith’s I Capture the Castle. It is a book which has never lost its appeal, from its wide range of eccentric characters to its sensitive handling of the relationships between them. I think I probably unconsciously identified with Cassandra, the narrator, who aspires to become a writer and is training herself by writing down her observations of her family and friends. It also contains a scene which never fails to make me laugh, when Cassandra – and her sister and stepmother – dye everything green – including themselves.

Gaudy Night

Also in my early teens I read Dorothy L Sayers’s Gaudy Night. It would be some years before I read her other books, but this one made a profound impression on me. Why? I suppose because it is so much more than a detective story – it is a joyous celebration of all that Oxford and scholarship meant to Sayers herself. It was a time when I was beginning to value and aspire to scholarship, and Sayers put into words the feelings I was clumsily trying to clarify for myself. The women’s college in the book is called Shrewsbury, but it is Somerville, thinly disguised and moved to a different location. When I went up for my scholarship interview at Somerville, I found myself looking for points of reference from Gaudy Night. So it was this book which determined for me which college I chose. At Somerville I met the friend who introduced me to my future husband, so it has a lot to answer for!

Emma

For our A Level English, we had one Jane Austen amongst our set books. Unfortunately, it was Mansfield Park, still my least favourite. It very nearly put me off Austen for life. Happily, in my first term at university, I came across a boxed set of Austen’s novels, duodecimo, bound in pale blue cloth, quarter bound in dark blue leather, with gilded edges and silk ribbon markers. I have to admit that I bought it as much for its beauty as anything. Then in the Christmas vacation I had a nasty bout of flu and read my way through all of them. I have never looked back. Difficult to decide which, but let’s choose Emma for now.

The Oxford Book of English Verse

Somewhere around the end of school and the beginning of university, I acquired The Oxford Book of English Verse. This is another of my ‘meaty’ choices. Something here for every mood. It would be lonely on a desert island, but dropping in to this anthology one could listen to so many different voices, over so many centuries, it would help to combat loneliness. And isn’t that what so much of reading is about? A dialogue between writer and reader.

A Room of One’s Own

Virginia Woolf’s long essay, based on a series of lectures, is my only non-fiction choice. Woolf belonged to a generation of women who were fighting for recognition as the intellectual equals of men, especially in the field of literature, and this was a seminal work. Our generation has been luckier, but even now the inequalities persist, even though they are sometimes disguised. I have not escaped being patronised, from time to time, and younger women too have not reached that desirable goal of equality.

Now for some sturdy classics, always good to reread:

Middlemarch

I am an admirer of all George Eliot’s work, and of her courageous life, but I feel that Middlemarch is her greatest achievement. In it she manages to portray a whole society, so that we have both a wide spectrum of individual stories, and a sweeping overview of an entire town and countryside. I don’t think there is anything else quite like it. She cleverly persuades the reader to sympathise with characters like Dorothea and Fred, and yet also to want to kick them from time to time! Casaubon’s letter proposing marriage is one of the cleverest and most appalling passages in any novel. The richness of the whole work is also made up of tiny details, like Dorothea earnestly designing cottages for the poor, and Rosamund tatting when gentlemen call, because it allows her to display her dainty foot without censure.

The Warden

I enjoy almost all of Anthony Trollope’s books, but The Warden holds a special place in my affections. Partly because it was the first one I read, but mostly because I am so fond of Mr Harding, the warden. Although there is satire here, it is fairly gentle, not as savage as it could sometimes be in Trollope’s other books. The story pinpoints a particular episode in nineteenth century history, when historic anomalies in church practices were being eliminated by zealous reformers, who were often too blinkered to realise that they often did as much damage as good. Yet the particularity can be seen as reflecting other such episodes at other times. A salutary read.

Bleak House

I think we must have a Dickens – plenty of reading in Bleak House. Like Middlemarch, it is very wide-ranging, from the gentry and aristocracy down to the poorest of the poor, but one of the things I find most interesting about it is Dickens’s innovative narrative technique. As far as I know, he was the first person to alternate between first person and third person narrative. It must have seemed quite extraordinary at the time. As always with Dickens, a richly evocative picture of his contemporary society. In Esther Summerson he portrays a much more believable character than the shallow young women of his earlier novels, and Lady Dedlock is a complex study in self-denying repression. Inspector Bucket is, of course, one of the first detectives in literature.

Well, there are my ten. There could have been so many more. Looking over them, it’s intriguing to note that the most influential ones were all read before I was twenty-one. I think that tells us something about how important reading can be for the young. If I am to choose my desert island, I will not opt for anything tropical, as I don’t like excessive heat. I think I will choose somewhere in the Orkney Islands. Some are inhabited, but I am sure we can find an isolated one.

So, how would you choose your books?

Till next time,
Ann

Comments

Congratulations, Ann, that’s fantastic and I hope it works out for you. I read your book list with interest and some of my choices would have matched yours. The Woods of Windri is a new one to me. It sounds lovely.

Thanks, Mairi! Of course, I’ve started casting already – Anton Lesser would be brilliant as Walsingham . . . Dorothy Dunnett was a contender, but you’d want the whole series (either of them) and that would be cheating.

I knew Anton Lesser (and his mother) in the early sixties in Bham! Great to follow his successful career. Wish I too could cast him in Lamplight or Vichyssoise – but first I’d need a wonderful TV/Film agent like yours!

I think Anton Lesser is a superb actor, and he’d be perfect for Walsingham, with that slightly stressed look! Walsingham effectively killed himself with overwork – though I hope Anton Lesser doesn’t! Have you heard his recordings of C J Sansom’s books? Wonderful!

Ann, I am happy for you! Please keep us posted on the television series.

The possible TV deal is exciting, but I think I am more excited about The Lopez Affair. When do you think it will be published?
I remain a huge fan of your work and appreciate your list of 10 books. Thank you for all you do for your readers.

Many congratulations ! Loved your blog & last months about all your hard work harvesting ! Nicholas Elyot would have been proud of you ! Great book list, I loved Gaudy Night, Middlemarch & Bleak House, must re-read them, plus some of your other recommendations !

Dear Ann, Congrats on you T.V. possibilities. I am delighted for you. I have read your books and love them. Hist. Fix. is my favor genre. I also think your list of 10 books is wonderful. I quite agree that they would be necessary if on a desert island. However I would add the Bible, for the wonderful stories not necessarily the religious content. I enjoy your blog and eagerly await the next edition. I am not a writer in you league, but I have written a kids book, “After the Kiss” which tells the true story of what happened after the Prince kissed Sleeping Beauty. Keep up the good work.

Thanks, Judith! Still can’t quite believe it. As for the books, I made the assumption that one would automatically be provided with the Bible (King James version, of course) and the complete works of Shakespeare. That’s always the rule on the radio programme Desert Island Discs, on which this is based! I suppose so many people gave those as their books, the producers of the programme decided they’d better give them those 2 anyway!

Thanks, Jenni! I think the way it works is this. The production company sells the series to a UK TV channel (like the BBC), who then sell it on to other countries. Sometimes it’s a shared deal, where a channel in the UK plus (say) one in the US and one in Australia are also in on the deal. It’s all very complicated, but fortunately I don’t have to do any of it!

It will be nice to see something from the UK which is not, for once, set in the early to middle 20th century. Much as I liked Parade’s End and Brideshead (well, anything by Waugh) the rest of the output is less impressive.

My choices would be based on books I know I can re-read without becoming bored. This means writers who are masters of style as well as content.

I liked the list, particularly the inclusion of Dorothy Sayers – a much underrated author. I would probably swap Emma for Persuasion, Emma is a better book but I have a soft spot for Persuasion, and try to find some space for Villette – Virginia Wolf will have to go.

I would also like a nod to some modernity and would include The Scar by China Miéville. The first page alone is worth it. Sadly, however, I can’t identify which book I would drop – probably the Needham which has no resonance for me (I will have to read the book to compare to Rosemary Sutcliff).

I really need more room since I would also like to include something by Waugh (can the Sword of Honour trilogy be counted as one book?) and by Wodehouse. As a further nod to modernity, of sorts, something by Steven Erikson (probably not a choice by many I suspect). And after that, Iain Banks, Terry Pratchett, Barbara Tuchman, David Halberstam – maybe if the books were very small I could pretend the 10.

Hmm, William, I haven’t counted, but I think you’re cheating here. You see how difficult it is? I love Persuasion too, not just because the central character is another Ann/Anne (!), but for its subtlety. So difficult to decide on one Austen. I also think Villette is interesting, though I think I prefer Shirley. Rather less downtrodden women. I wouldn’t expect a man to go for A Room of One’s Own, but I think it resonates with a lot of women. Rosemary Sutcliff is a given, of course, and I read (and have reread) all her books, but The Woods of Windri was the very first historical novel I read, so it had to be there.

Good Morning, Anne
What wonderful news, and so well deserved. I know the feeling as I’ve recently sold film rights to my biography of the African American woman who designed and produced Jacqueline Kennedy’s wedding dress. I am polishing up my blogpost about the transaction and, if you’re interested, will send you a note when it is posted. Hopefully it will give encouragement to other indie published authors. Wish we could get together and wait through the process together. Again, hooray! I’ll raise a holiday glass of cheer to you tonight.

Am I understanding correctly that the paperback version is not available for sale by Amazon, and that it is only available through 3rd party sellers? Is there a reason you can share?

Will purchase the new novel however is necessary as like the rest of your readers, I have been anxiously waiting for it to appear. And now will anticipate the arrival of the next Oxford Mystery.

Belated congratulations on the development for TV deal for the wonderful Chronicles of Christoval Alvarez! It is a terrific achievement for you and an exciting gift for your readers. It will be well worth the wait.

It’s just the US Amazon messing about, Kristen. It’s only gone on sale today, and the Kindle version is available everywhere. The paperback is available in the UK, so it should be on the US version shortly. Don’t buy from the 3rd parties – they’re charging too much! Usually Amazon is more efficient than this. Maybe the Christmas rush is causing them problems. Wait a few hours and it should appear. Yes, the TV deal is exciting!

Kristen, I don’t know why they are being so slow on the US Amazon. Very irritating! I’m sure it can only be a matter of hours. Usually the books appear in both the US and UK around the same time. If it hasn’t appeared by tomorrow I’ll try to chase it up, though they tend to be a bit slow replying.

Congratulations on the Alvarez TV series. I have read all 9 books inthe series. Have just read the Lopez Affair. It was to read over Christmas, but after reading the first page I could not put it down. It was exceptionally good, and you have left us on the edge yet again. I really love Kit as a character, but I feel she needs a bit of love and tender care. It would be nice to see her as a woman accepted into her career. But who am I to tell an author how her character should progress. But Ann I have really enjoyed all your books and look forward to more. In your top 10, I also would take Middlemarch, by George Elliot, Emma by Jane Austin plus Sense and Sensibility, and any of Virgina Woolf’s. Wishing you a Merry Christmas.

Oops! There goes your Christmas read – but nothing better for an author to hear! I’m afraid it would not be possible for Kit to be acknowledged as a woman and remain a physician. As a physician, she would always need to remain in disguise. Women were only allowed to become doctors in the late 19th century, apart from one curious period in 12th century Sicily. She could, of course, be a midwife, or a herbalist. It’s extraordinary how long that prejudice lasted, isn’t it? I hope to write the 10th Kit book next year, but just now I’ve started work on the 5th Oxford book, The Troubadour’s Tale. Merry Christmas to you, too!

I love your Alvarez series of books unfortunately my mother can’t read and waiting for the audiobooks to come out for the last two in the series. Do you have any idea when the audiobooks will come out?

I’m delighted that you’re enjoying the Alvarez books, and that your mother can listen to the audio versions. Jan is recording The Play’s the Thing at the moment, so that should be available in about a month or six weeks. She’ll probably record That Time May Cease later this year, and then The Lopez Affair – it depends on her other commitments.

Bravo, Ann, for a television series of Dr. Alvarez. I’ve just finished reading all of Cristoval’s adventures, and would love to see them in such a place as “Masterpiece,” which we can reliably find here in the US. (And greatly appreciate it!) Please keep us posted for details.

It’s very exciting, Alexandra, and the contracts are now all in place, but the process is very, very slow! At the moment they have a potential scriptwriter reading all the books, so that’s the first stage. I’ll certainly keep everyone posted via my website blogs. Have you read my Oxford medieval series? If you enjoyed Kit’s stories, I think you will enjoy Nicholas’s!